The Spears of Laconia (Purge of Babylon, Book 7) (32 page)

He lowered the binoculars and laid it next to his pack, which had begun to tremble slightly as the vehicles neared. The four in the truck beds were peeking over the cabs, but they clearly only had eyes for the tank parked out there in the field, which was exactly what he was hoping for.

He picked up the M4 and focused on the first truck—the white one—as it sped toward him.

Fifty meters…

Forty…

He could make out the two figures inside the cab now. Both men—one had a bright red beard and the other looked bald.

Thirty meters…

The two in the back looked nervous. Both men. Twenties. The lack of a machine gun mounted in front of them did wonders for Keo’s confidence. The last thing he wanted was to go head-to-head with a technical.

Twenty meters…

He smelled overworked tires and leaking fluid, both indications the vehicles had been on the road for some time now. He wondered how many other collaborators were running around out there, trying to deal with Mercer’s encroachment.

Ten meters!

Keo shoved every other thought away, popped up onto one knee, and looked through the red dot sight at the front windshield of the white truck. He pulled the trigger and stitched the glass from right to left, starting with the driver before picking up the front passenger, and didn’t stop shooting until the truck swerved as the man behind the steering wheel did exactly what Keo expected—he slammed on the brake instead of trying to drive through the gunfire.

The first F-150 was already skidding when Keo heard the
pop-pop-pop
of Jordan’s rifle from the other side of the road. Keo concentrated on his target as it came to a stop, presenting its backside to him—along with the two uniformed men scrambling around in the truck bed. They were picking themselves up, having tumbled off their feet sometime during the chaos.

Keo flicked his fire selector to semi-auto and shot the first soldier in the chest as he was rising, an AK-47 clutched clumsily in one hand. The man disappeared behind the closed tailgate, while the second one—younger than Keo had first thought; he couldn’t have been more than eighteen—was spinning around, face frozen in shock, just before Keo put two rounds into the largest part of him.

Meanwhile, the tan truck had done the exact same thing as the white one—its driver had hit the brakes when he saw the lead vehicle skidding in front of him. It always amazed Keo how poorly civilians reacted to being shot at.

He was already on his feet and racing through the grass, while at the same time angling his way back toward the highway. Jordan had continued firing, her rifle slamming round after round toward the second truck. Keo had a fresh magazine in his M4 before he was within sight of the driver, who was still alive and had spotted Keo as he stepped onto the road.

Keo put two fresh bullets into the windshield, directly over the spot where the driver was. The man twitched and must have stepped on the gas, because the truck lurched forward and barreled through the fields and kept going for a good thirty meters before finally slowing down on the other side.

He ignored the runaway truck and focused on the tan one still parked on the road in front of him. Fresh blood was splashed across the windshield, blocking his view of the passenger, but he could see the other driver just fine. The man had already opened his car door and was standing outside with his rifle, shooting over the truck bed at Jordan’s position.

Keo jogged up the road, and he was within thirty meters before the man finally heard his approach and turned around. Keo shot him through the open driver-side door window and watched the man drop to the pavement.

The man was still alive when Keo reached him, though he had dropped his rifle and was in the process of reaching for his sidearm. Keo shot him in the chest, and the man stopped moving.

“Jordan!” he shouted.

“I’m good!” she shouted back.

He hurried to the back and looked into the truck bed. There was just one body—a young woman with a blonde ponytail—lying on her back in a pool of blood, staring up at him. She was clutching her stomach with both hands, blood pumping through dirt-covered fingers as she struggled to keep breathing. For a moment he thought it was Gaby, but the cheekbones were too sharp and the nose a little too flat.

Another body lay on the highway behind the vehicle where it had fallen. A man in his thirties, his face pressed into the hot pavement.

“Clear!” Keo shouted.

Jordan picked herself up and jogged over. “You okay?” she asked.

“I’m good,” he said. “You?”

“I told you, this isn’t my first rodeo.”

“Noted.”

When she reached the truck, Jordan looked into the back and saw the girl, and her face paled. Maybe this wasn’t her first rodeo, but seeing your victim up close was a different animal than shooting them from a distance while looking from behind a rifle.

“Check the other truck, just in case,” Keo said.

She looked up at him, opened her mouth to say something, but didn’t. Instead, she gave the girl another look, then turned and hurried over to the white Ford parked in the grass halfway to the beach.

Keo turned back to the woman. She was still alive, if just barely. The bullet had hit her in the stomach and it didn’t matter how hard she held on; the blood wasn’t going to stop pouring out of her.

“Sorry,” Keo said, and slung his rifle and reached for his sidearm, but by the time he looked back up, the girl had stopped moving completely. She continued staring, wide-eyed, at the bright morning sun above her.

Keo put the handgun away and checked his watch: 10:16 
A.M.

He glanced up the road, back at Sunport’s industrial buildings in the distance.

On the other side was T18…and Gillian.

*

“What about Gregson?”
Jordan asked when they were back on the road in the tan Ford F-150, with the beach fading in the rearview mirror.

There was blood in the front passenger seat where Jordan had shot out the window the same time she killed the man next to it. To avoid sitting in the mess she had made, Jordan was in the backseat with the rest of their supplies, including the AR-15s he’d taken from the tank and everything they had managed to salvage from the other truck.

The driver of the vehicle had somehow managed to escape Jordan’s initial volley unscathed, until Keo killed him outside on the road, so Keo had the luxury of not sitting in someone’s blood as he drove. Not that he hadn’t done something like it before and had a feeling he’d have to do it again in the future.

“What about him?” Keo said.

“Even after everything he’s done, I don’t like the idea of leaving him out there.”

“You wanna go back and put him out of his misery?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“I don’t like leaving him out there, hurt.”

“He’s getting what he’s got coming.”

“A lot of people can say the same about you.”

“And they’d be right.”

She was watching him curiously in the rearview mirror. “You really believe that?”

“Yeah,” he said without hesitation.

“I don’t.”

“That’s because you’re a good and decent human being, Jordan.”

“When did that become a bad thing?”

“About the same time the world ended.”

She didn’t answer, and instead looked out her window at the outskirts of Sunport rolling by. He couldn’t even begin to guess what was going through her mind at the moment. Maybe it was still Gregson, or the girl she had shot. Maybe both. Or she could be wishing she had left with Lara, like he had told her to.

“Any idea who’s taken over T18 after Steve didn’t come back from Santa Marie Island?” he asked.

Jordan thought about it for a moment. Then, “A few people come to mind, but no one stands out. Steve had that place on a pretty tight leash. I would have said Jack, but he’s dead, too.”

“What’s the protocol when one of the leaders get taken out?”

“I have no idea. I don’t even know how Steve got chosen in the first place.”

“Tobias never talked about it? Steve told me they used to be co-leaders.”

She shook her head. “He never did.”

“What about Gillian?”

“What about her?”

He grinned. “How do you think she’s going to react when I show back up there again?”

Jordan smiled back at him. “Gillian loves you, Keo.”

“She has a strange way of showing it.”

“Don’t blame her for what happened with Jay. We thought you were dead. It was worse for her. There were times when I didn’t think she’d make it. Not because she couldn’t physically, but because she didn’t want to.”

Keo didn’t know how to respond to that, so he kept quiet.

“In a lot of ways, that baby saved her life,” Jordan continued. “Don’t hate me, but she made the right decision. I don’t mean sleeping with Jay; I don’t know why she did that. I mean deciding to stay behind, even after you finally showed up.”

“I know,” he said.

And he did, which was why he was fully prepared to move on. The truth hurt, but it was undeniable. Gillian, in her current state, would have struggled to survive out here. Maybe if he had gotten her to the
Trident,
where Zoe could have helped with the pregnancy, but there was a lot of space between T18 and the Gulf of Mexico.

Besides, who was he kidding? Happy endings were for other people, not someone like him. He had come to accept that long ago, even though, for a short time there, he had almost managed to convince himself that he deserved one, too.

What an idiot. I guess we know better now, don’t we?

LARA

“I can’t believe
he didn’t come back with you,” Carly said, even before Lara had completely stepped inside the bridge of the
Trident.
“And after dragging our asses down here, too. You should have given him a swift kick in the balls for wasting our time.”

“He has his reasons,” Lara said.

“He always has his reasons. What were they this time?”

“He had someone with him named Frank that he wanted me to meet. Or this Frank wanted to meet me. I’m not sure which.”

“Frank?” Carly said. “What a stupid name. Sounds like an out of work porno actor.”

“You know a lot about that?” Blaine asked from his usual position behind the yacht’s controls.

“Hey, I had cable TV, just like everyone else. Scrambled, sure, but you can still see stuff if you look at it at just the right angles.”

“Makes sense to me,” Blaine said. He glanced back at Lara: “Maybe this Frank heard one of your radio messages and wanted to meet the woman behind it. Like it or not, you’re pretty popular these days.”

“Maybe,” she said, though she didn’t believe that could even be remotely true. Nothing Keo had told her about this Frank made him sound like a “fan.” Besides, just the thought of someone out there going through all this trouble just to “meet” her was…unsettling.

What was that Keo had said about Frank?

“He had information about the ghouls. How they operate, their chain of command, all the nitty-gritty stuff. He also said he knew how to beat them.”

She looked at Carly and Blaine, then at the wide-open and calm ocean outside the windshield behind them. What good was Frank’s information to her, even if it was true? Or to Vera and Elise, and all the others onboard the
Trident
at the moment? She couldn’t think of a single thing.

We should have gone straight to the Bengal Islands, Will. You would have taken us there, wouldn’t you? You would have done the right thing. The
smart
thing. You always did.

“It’s a moot point anyway, because he wasn’t there,” Lara said. “They got separated two nights ago. Keo says he’s still alive, but I’m not sure he actually believes it.”

“So that’s why he didn’t radio in,” Carly said. “A lot of people are losing their radios these days…”

Lara put a hand on Carly’s arm and they exchanged a brief, private smile. It was a rare occasion to see Carly so somber, and Lara thought she needed the support, even if it was just a simple touch. God knew Carly had done so much more for her over the last few weeks.

“So what
did
happen over there last night?” Blaine asked. He was, thankfully, oblivious to the private moment taking place behind him. “If Keo was on that beach, that means he was either involved or he saw what went down.”

“A little of both,” Lara said.

“Why am I not surprised?” Carly said.

Lara told them about Gregson and Mercer, about the tank, the destruction it had caused including the scorched fields and the cemetery of bones, and what Gregson and Keo had told her was happening out there in the rest of Texas.

“Damn,” Carly said when Lara was done. “Sounds like a party I’m glad no one invited me to.” She might have even shivered a bit. “They have that kind of firepower?”

“I saw the tank with my own eyes,” Lara said. “I don’t have any reason to disbelieve this Gregson.”

“People lie, Lara.”

“I don’t think Gregson was lying. He didn’t have any reasons to at the time.”

“But they’re definitely not the U.S. Army?” Blaine asked.